Who He Might Have Been
by HuskerCat
Summary: He's always been more than just a jock, more than just a gun-toting special agent, but he never shares that part of himself with anyone.  Until he shares it with her.


**Author's Note: I've been a little stuck in a scene in another piece and thought that I'd write this idea that was running around my head. Well, that little one-shot idea became an almost 5,000 word scene :)**

**I hope that you enjoy it.**

**Now, back to my other story...**

She sat on the couch, her feet on the coffee table, papers on her lap and spread around her. She was working out the details of how she was going to present her case to the jury and she wasn't pleased about the choices she had to make; the corrupt financial officer before or after the courier for the arms dealer? Before or after the drug-involved partner? She shook her head. Sometimes you just had to make the case you had work.

She stretched and looked around the room. She thought Don might have come down at some point while she was buried in her work, but he didn't seem to be around. "Hey, Don," she called. "You still alive up there?" She waited a moment. "Don?"

She heard him on the steps. "Just finishing up some reading," he said as he reached the bottom of the staircase.

She looked at him curiously. "I thought you said that you didn't have any case files to work on tonight?"

"I don't," he said, going to the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator.

She looked at the coffee table, at what she'd pushed out of the way to lay out her paperwork. His usual magazines were sitting there.

"Then what were you reading? Your magazines are sitting here?"

He shook his head. "I was reading a book. I do do that on occasion, you know." He took a swig of water. "Why do people seem to find that so shocking?" he mumbled.

She sighed. He was in one of **those** moods; a little testy, a little stressed, a little lost. He'd just finished his first case without Charlie and Amita and probably the last case he'd work with David before David left to head his own team in D.C. She sighed again. "I didn't mean anything by it. I just don't see you read books all that often."

The comment just seemed to piss him off. "Thanks," he said sarcastically. "Good to know that you think that I'm illiterate."

Mood or not, she wasn't going to let him put words in her mouth. "I didn't say that. I didn't imply it. All I said is that I don't see you pull out a book very often. It's not like you have a lot of spare time to just sit and read a book."

"Right," he said, his voice still full of sarcasm. "My limited spare time is full of such mentally taxing things like food, sex and ESPN. Why would I ever do what other educated adults do and take the time to read a book?"

She rolled her eyes. This was more than just a mood; he seemed to be trying to pick a fight, trying to distract himself from something. With difficulty, she kept her mouth shut.

But he wasn't done. He took a couple of steps over to his wide bookshelves, stood in front of them. He let his eyes roam over the meticulously, almost neurotically, organized volumes. "Do I strike you as someone who would just keep shelves of books for decoration?"

"No," she answered simply. He was definitely **not** someone who kept a lot of superfluous stuff out and around his space. Everything had a point, a purpose, even the artwork on his walls.

"Then they're there for a reason. The reason being that I've read them. That I continue to reference them." He continued examining the titles.

"Okay," she said softly. She watched him, hoping to see the tension ease a little in his posture, in his shoulders. It didn't. She realized at that moment that she didn't even know what books he was looking at. At various times she'd studied his large, eclectic, music collection, also obsessively arranged, but that she'd never really looked at the titles on the shelves, never figured out what his taste in literature was. She then realized that she'd started holding her breath. She forced herself to exhale. "I'm not usually looking for something to read. When I need something, it's generally for a case reference. Most people don't keep constitutional law books around."

He pulled a book off one of the shelves and threw it over to the couch. She picked it up and looked at the title. "The Constitution and Law: Discussions on 21st Century Policy Implications".

She looked up at him. "It's probably not exactly what you need. There are some interesting essays, though I found the discussions on privacy issues a little weak. They didn't take into account all of the changes in technology and people's conceptions of public and private," he said, turning back to the shelves.

"Alright." She stared at his back, trying to figure out what this was really about.

"Do you even know what I majored in in college?" he asked after a few moments of silence.

"Baseball and girls," she said. The moment it came out of her mouth she knew she shouldn't have said it. She wasn't going to joke or one-line him out of whatever this was. She shut her eyes, waiting for the backlash. She didn't have to wait long.

"Again, thanks," sarcasm and anger filled his voice. "I really enjoy being thought of as some girl-chasing, mindless jock." She could hear the crunching of the plastic of his water bottle as his hand tightened around it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You know, you rarely ever talk about college and when you do, it's about baseball and parties."

He walked over to the couch and picked the book up. He took it back to the shelf and put it back in its place, returning order to the shelf. "I have a BA in history," he said. "With honors."

His voice had lost most of the sarcasm and anger but the tension remained in his body. She could practically feel it vibrating off of him when he'd been near her. "I'm not surprised," she said gently.

"I was actually a really good student."

She smiled at him. She wondered if this was about Charlie. If his having left for Cambridge brought back some long-buried issues.

He walked over to his small desk by the kitchen, the place where, as he put it, he managed life; where he paid bills, kept his calendar, sorted his mail and messages. He sat down in his desk chair and opened one of the file drawers. She knew that the one on the right was labeled "Current" and the one on the left "History". He opened the left drawer and pulled out a file. He shut the drawer, got up, pushed the chair back in and walked over to her. Silently, he handed her the folder then walked over to one of the large windows overlooking the city. He rested his hands on the ledge and stared out into the night, the darkness interrupted by the city lights.

She looked at him and then at the folder he'd handed her. The hanging file folder didn't have a tab label on it, unlike every other folder in the drawers. She remembered teasing him about his obsessive labeling and wondered why she hadn't noticed the one unlabeled file. She opened it and found several older file folders inside, also unlabeled. She figured that he must have been very familiar with them to not have identified them in any way.

She opened the first folder, which was thicker than the others. At first glance, the front page seemed to be some sort of title page. She started to read it.

California State University, Fullerton

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of History

Honors Thesis

Eppes, Don J.

April, 1992

Changing Views: Civilians as Targets in World War II and the Post-War Era

Professor Thomas M. Harding, PhD, Department of History, Advisor

She looked up. "You wrote an honors thesis." He didn't answer. "Most people I know tried to find a way out of doing any kind of thesis."

"I didn't. I wrote mine," he said tightly, still staring out the window.

She looked back to the file, flipping to the second page. It had a grid with comments written in a number of boxes; with apparently different handwritings and without his name on top. "Blind review?" she asked.

"Yeah."

She looked at the comments. They were brief and talked about his "thorough research", "concise writing style" and "strong mastery of content". Underneath, there was a longer, handwritten comment.

"Don,

I'm glad you won our 'battle royal'. You know my initial concerns about your topic choice and direction, but when all is said and done, you stayed with what you believed and it worked. You found the line between dry academic fact and maudlin sentimentality and stuck to it, ending up with something of which you can be proud. It's an excellent piece.

Your feel for your topic, depth of your research and your use of clean, elegant language, show a talent for writing and historical research; you should continue to pursue it.

Good luck and let me know if there is any way I can help, now or in the future. TMH"

After the comment, there were three lines, all with "high pass" written on them and initialed. She smiled. When he did something, he did it right. She looked up at him, but his back was still to her. "You fought with your advisor?" she asked, having an easier time imaging that than his writing the document.

"It wasn't a fight. It was an intellectual difference of opinion," he answered.

She flipped to the next page to read his introduction. She quickly fell into the familiar rhythm of his prose, recognizing that while the terms and technical language may be different, the style was very similar to the case notes and reports he wrote now and that often found their way into her files. And then she saw it in her mind's eye. A much younger Don in a t-shirt and sweats, baseball cap on backwards, chewing gum while he sat in the library taking notes in his tight, controlled handwriting. His books were open, spread across the table and he was engrossed in what he was doing; his friends and teammates long gone, off doing something that probably seemed to them far more fun and interesting. He was lost in what he was doing; this was his time.

And then the image was gone, his paper back in front of her. She looked over to where he still stood, staring out the window. He seemed so far away, but she also felt like that she'd gotten closer to him, had learned about a part of him that he didn't share with many people. She flipped through more of the text until she reached his conclusions. She read them, knowing that at some point, she wanted to read all 104 meticulously researched and noted pages, wanted to connect with the young man who'd written them. Then she saw him again, this time in jeans and a polo shirt, sitting in the computer lab typing, snapping his gum in rhythm to his keystrokes. "Don," she whispered so quietly that he couldn't hear her.

She carefully shut the folder, making sure that the pages inside remained flat; she didn't want to chance damaging his work. She set the folder aside but paused before opening the next one. He'd handed her the entire file, but she wasn't sure if he really wanted her to look at it as well. She took a deep breath and opened it. The top page looked familiar. She read down the first few lines and then went back and read them again, checking the date of the letter. "Don," she said. "These are LSAT scores. Really good ones." She looked at the numbers again. "Even better than mine."

"I know," he said, not turning around and without a hint of a smile or humor in his voice.

She sighed, turning over the letter. Behind it were several envelopes, all open and addressed to him at what must have been his college address. She recognized the logo on the front of the first envelope. She squinted a little and then pulled the letter out, reading it three times before putting it back. She opened the next and then the next, repeating the process seven times in total. She frowned slightly. "Don, do you know what these are?"

He snorted. "Of course I do. I put them in there."

"But did you read them first?" she asked with a hint of sarcasm. "I mean these are acceptance letters to some of the best schools in the country." She flipped through the envelopes again. "The Master's program in history at Georgetown, the one at Berkeley, Georgetown Law, Columbia Law, William & Mary's law school and Cornell's and Yale's."

He nodded once. "Yes."

"I don't get it," she said. "What is this about?"

She saw him lean his forehead against the window. "My parents, my mom especially, told me that the point of college was to get an education. The point wasn't baseball, it wasn't a job, it wasn't a career. It was an education. She told me over and over and over again."

"But you wanted to play baseball," she said softly.

"She didn't care," he corrected himself, "didn't mind, that I played baseball. It paid for school. And it was okay with her that I wanted to keep pursuing it. But it's not what college was for." He shut his eyes and sighed. "No matter what, you'll always have your education," he whispered.

She wanted to go over to him, but she knew that he wouldn't respond well to it; because while his voice and words had softened, there was still an attitude coming from him that told her that the sarcasm and anger was still really close to the surface and that it could, would be unleashed at her at the drop of a hat. She took a deep breath. "I still don't understand, Don. I…"

"I didn't know if playing at the next level was going to happen. I had a plan B."

"Yale was plan B? Really?"

"I was never going to go to Yale," he said flatly.

"Where would you have gone?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't matter."

She stared at his reflection in the window. "You do know." She looked up at the ceiling. "Son, Russians don't take a dump without a plan," she mumbled.

He turned to her. "What are you talking about?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Hunt for Red October?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind. The point is you know. You knew then what you wanted to do, or at least what you would do." She paused, giving him a chance to say something. He didn't. "Don," she said softly, "tell me."

"It doesn't matter," he whispered.

She held up the folders. "You showed me these. It does matter." Moments passed. "Don?"

He turned back to the window. "Cornell," he whispered. "I would have gone to Cornell."

She nodded slightly. "Why didn't you? I mean after baseball?"

He ran his hands through his short hair. "Because I joined the FBI."

She rolled her eyes. She wanted to make a smart remark about the obviousness of that statement, but she didn't. It would only cause more harm than good. She thought for a moment. "Your parents didn't try to talk you out of it?"

"They couldn't. They didn't know. I never told anyone."

She stared at him. "Why would you keep that a secret?"

"I went to play rookie ball. It didn't matter. Why make it an issue?" He sat down in a chair near the window. "It would have only made things difficult."

She shook her head. "I don't get that. It's a great accomplishment and you kept it from them. You didn't give them the chance to celebrate what you did, even acknowledge it. It makes no sense."

He dropped his head and then laced his fingers behind. "It's not true. I told my mother," he whispered.

She pressed her hands into her forehead. "Don…" Her head was starting to throb.

"She was sick," his voice soft but thick with emotion. "We knew that time was…that there wasn't…We knew but we were trying to pretend like we didn't know. I was working but trying to make sure I got home every night to make sure I spent time with her." He rubbed his hands through his hair again, and then rested his head in his hands. "We had a case, and it kept us going for like three days straight. No real sleep, barely time to eat anything, pounding down doors, just going and going. I hadn't even called home. And finally they pulled us from the field. All I wanted to do was to get a long shower, a real meal and sleep. I mean we'd been out so long I thought they might have to surgically remove my comms. But I had to see her. So, I just washed my face and changed my shirt and went home."

She lifted her head and looked over, a slight smile on her lips. She was always fascinated at his use of home. She knew that he'd had his own place back then, but the Craftsman, his childhood home, was always home, whether he lived there or not. And it still was.

"And I got there and my father was just sitting there reading the paper. Just like any other day. And you know, that has always stuck in my head. I don't know why." He looked up at the ceiling, resting his head on the back of the chair. "I went in to her room and she was propped up on her pillows and I thought she was asleep but she turned to look at me when I came in. She looked so… I don't know…" He shook his head.

In that moment, her heart ached for him. Every bit of the anger and sarcasm seemed to have left him. He didn't often talk about his mother and even less about the time around her death and never with the emotion that she heard in his voice. She sighed.

"I sat down on the bed, next to her. She took my hand like she always did and smiled and told me I looked tired. Too tired. I told her I was fine and that all I needed was a good night's sleep. She stroked my cheek and called me 'baby'. Until she got sick, she hadn't called me that in years. I told her again that I was just tired but I could tell that she didn't really believe it; she was worried about me. I didn't want her to worry. Right then I knew that I'd do anything if I could give her just five extra minutes of not having to worry. I told her about grad school, about law school. I told her that I would do whatever she wanted me to. I would go sit in a room covered in bubble wrap if that's what she wanted. Anything." He got up from the chair and went back to the window. "She didn't say anything for the longest time. She just looked at me." He turned to look at her. "You know what she said?" he asked.

It was the first time during his monologue that he addressed her, even seemed to notice that she was still there.

"She told me that she wanted me to be happy. 'Do what's right for you,' she said. Then she told me she loved me." He turned back to the window and rested his forehead against it. "And then she squeezed my hand and said 'Baby, you know I love you, so take this the way it's meant. Go take a shower. You really stink.'" He gave a half laugh. "I remembered that I hadn't really cleaned up and that I'd been basically wearing the same clothes for three days and that I probably smelled like gunpowder and the chemicals from flash bangs. I went to take a shower. I literally ran through all the hot water in the tank. If they'd had one of those unlimited tanks back then, I might have stayed in there all night."

"Don," she said softly. "Would you have done it? If she asked?"

He turned around again, facing her. He nodded. "I would have done anything." He took a deep breath. "If she'd looked at me and said 'Don Joseph Eppes stop this. You aren't a child anymore, stop playing cops and robbers,' I would have gone in the next day and resigned. If she told me to go to law school I would have enrolled for the next semester. To give her some peace of mind, anything."

"But not your father?"

"What? My father? What does he have to do with this?"

"You said you would have given it all up if your mother asked. But you wouldn't for your father?"

"My father never asked me to leave the Bureau. He never even told me not to join." He paused. "Neither did she," he whispered.

"Really? I would have thought…"

"No," he interrupted. "I heard every version possible of 'you're doing what?' and 'you quit baseball to do what?', including some that I think were probably Yiddish and not English. But he never told me not to do it."

"But if he'd known, if they'd known…"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I do know that my father believes that there comes a point where you have to let your children be who they're going to be. Whether he would have thought that at 23 I was there…," he shrugged. "You'd have to ask him." He went back to staring out the window.

They sat in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she couldn't take the quiet anymore. "Don, what's going on? What is this all about?" She watched him run his hands through his hair but he didn't say anything. "Please say something."

"I don't know what to tell you."

"You came down here in a mood, ready to start a fight. You do that when you want to get out of your head."

"Well, sometimes my head isn't the best place to be," he whispered.

"I know." She got up from the couch, crossed the room and stood behind him. She started to massage the back of his neck, kneading the tight muscles with her thumbs. He dropped his head into his hands.

"I don't know why I do this," he mumbled. "I hate this. I hate being…"

"…out of control," she said, finishing his sentence. Then a thought crossed her mind. "But this isn't the out of control part. You do this, picking a fight, to try and regain control."

"I don't know. Maybe." He pushed the heels of his hands into his brow.

She continued to massage his neck, just as much to try to comfort him as to try to clarify her own thoughts with the repetitive motion. "Don, why college? Why your mom?"

"No good reason."

She shook her head. "So, if I hadn't made a comment about reading books, you would have started in with me about movies, your brother and Mexican food?"

"Maybe," he mumbled. "Who knows…"

"You know, you never talk about her. Not really."

He shrugged. "Wait," he said after a moment. "What's today?"

"Wednesday," she responded.

"No, the date."

She thought for a moment. "The 10th."

He groaned. "This never hits me this way," he said softly, more to himself than to her. "Friday's the 12th. August 12th. It's the…anniversary…of…" He couldn't finish the sentence.

She bit her lip. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"This never hits me this way," he repeated. "Never." He looked up at the ceiling. "Damn."

She returned to massaging his neck. "She was a good mom," she said quietly.

He dropped his head again. "Yeah, she was." He paused. "You never met my mother."

"But the evidence is quite clear when you look at the two sons she raised. They're both pretty amazing men." She took a deep breath. "She loved you so much, Don," she whispered.

He nodded slightly. "I know," he whispered. "I know."

Her thumbs moved to his shoulders. "Are you going to be okay?"

He nodded again. "Yeah."

But she knew from the tone of his voice that it would be a couple of long, hard days before he was. The sleepless nights, the missed meals, the irritability, all a part of his process when he was stressed out emotionally, until he either worked it out or moved on to the next issue, the next distraction.

A few minutes later, without warning, he got up and headed out of the room. She was about to say something when he went into the bathroom and shut the door. She shook her head. Some things in life were just necessary, no matter where your head was. She looked up at the clock and then reached for the phone.

He came out a moment later, just as she was hanging up. "My father, my rabbi or my therapist?" he asked.

"What?" Then she realized he saw the phone in her hand. She smiled. "The late night Chinese take-out place around the corner. Wanton soup, egg drop soup…"

"I hate egg drop. It's slimy," he interrupted.

"That's for me. Moo shoo, pepper steak and fried rice. It'll be here in half an hour. You need to eat something."

He sighed. "Right." He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer, popping the top off. He took a long drink from the bottle before putting it down and resting his elbows against the counter. "You know, if you're trying to get me to talk more, Chinese food won't do it."

"I know. Ice cream. Since you were a kid. Your father told me," she said with a wistful smile.

He took another drink from his beer and then went over to the couch where she'd been most of the evening. He picked up the file folders, put them back into the hanging file and moved towards his desk to put the file away.

"Don't," she said. "I want to read it, your thesis."

He turned, squinting slightly at her. "Why?"

"I want to know that part of you. I want to know that 21, 22 year old college student. The closet academic."

"Why?" he asked again. "It's not me. Not anymore."

"It's a part of who you were and I think probably still a part of who you are."

"No." He shook his head. "It's not. It was half a lifetime ago."

"But you still keep it in your desk. It's not filed away somewhere in some box or in storage. You chose to keep it close. You don't keep things around just because. There's a reason."

He ran his hand through his hair, shutting his eyes. He took a deep breath and then opened them, looking right at her. "What if this," he held up the folder, "is what she wanted for me?"

She looked at the folder and then looked into his eyes, full of emotion and fatigue. "She wanted you to be happy," she said. "Would it have made you happy?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either," she replied honestly. "But promise me, if you ever even have a thought that it might, that we'll talk about it. That you just won't dismiss the thought."

He rolled his eyes, trying to avoid answering her. He sighed. "Yeah."

She nodded. "Now put it down."

He left the file on the console.

She went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine, pouring herself a glass. As she passed by his music system, she hit the on button. They both needed something to settle their minds, sounds other than their own voices. "Leather and Lace" started playing.

He looked at her. "You've got to be kidding." He was not in the mood.

She shrugged. "It's your playlist, G-man."

He grabbed the remote, clicked it a few times and then took his beer back to the couch. As he sat down, a classical piece started. A faint smile crossed his lips and leaned back, resting his head on the back of the couch. He shut his eyes.

"Mozart?" she asked. "Or Beethoven?"

"Schumann," he said softly. "Piano Concerto in A minor."

She sat down next to him then rested her head on his shoulder. She shut her eyes. They sat there, exhausted, not moving, letting the music wash over them, waiting for their food to arrive.


End file.
